The javelin or pilum
consists
of a long iron head with a small point, and a wooden
shaft. On
the
most common type, the bottom of the head widens into a flat
tang, which
is riveted into the widened top of the wood shaft. The
second
type
has a socketed head, and a third type, less well-known, has
a spike
tang.
In the first century AD, some tanged pila are shown with a
spherical
weight,
presumed to be lead, behind the joint block.
Apparently the
weapon
had become lighter over the centuries, and the weight was
added to
increase
its "punch".

Pilum heads are 14" to
30"
long,
with pyramidal or barbed points c. 2" long. The iron
shanks are
about
1/4" thick (round) below the point, swelling to c. 3/8" or
1/2" square
at the base. The tang is an inch or more wide, and can
be
rectangular
or slightly flaired. (Before forging the tang, it's a
good idea
to
fold up c. 6" of the shank, then flatten, to strengthen the
tang and
allow
more width.) There is no evidence that the points were
specially
hardened--they penetrate simply due to their shape.
Likewise, the
iron shank cannot really be described as "soft", it bends on
impact
because it is
thin.

The wood shaft is
made
all in one
piece, generally ash, though oak or hickory are also
acceptable.
Overall it is 4 to 5 feet long,
making
the complete weapon 5-1/2 to 7 feet in length. Most
of the
length
(or all of it, for a socketed pilum) is round in section,
about 7/8" to
1-1/8" in diameter. At the top of the top of the
shaft is the
tapered,
square-section "joint block", 5" to 8" long. It is
slotted to
receive
the tang, and capped with an iron ferrule or collett which
is secured
by
2 little iron wedges. (Since the ferrule is also
tapered, it
works
best to allow a little of the wood to project above it, to
be splayed
out
by the wedges.) Two or three rivets hold the tang in
place; a
socketed
head needs only a small nail.

All iron parts of the
pilum
should be
black from the forge, imitated if necessary by heating the
piece and
wiping
it with oil. The buttspike is a cone made by
wrapping a triangle
of sheet steel (20-gauge). The point is sometimes
hammered into a
square-section spike, but the seam is usually not forged
shut. It
is secured to the shaft with a small nail. The head
can be
riveted
to the shaft with regular nails if you first heat the
heads red hot and
give them a few raps with a hammer to make them look
forged. Use
a washer at both ends of the nail and peen the end flat
like a regular
rivet. Washers can be cut from blackened sheet steel
with a cold
chisel; round washers can be used but first remove any
galvanization
and
blacken them.

The wood may
be
treated
with linseed oil, but should not be stained.
An ash 2x2
can
be worked down to the proper shape by first sawing the
shaft section
down
to 1" square, then using a drawknife and rasp to round
it. Then
saw
the joint block to its desired shape. Starting with
a hole-digger
handle--mostly round with a square-section end--is another
option.

Click on the image at
left for
a larger version. The junction blocks of two pila are
shown,
one with two rivets and one with three. Next to them
is an
unmounted
pilum head showing the flat tang, as well as a ferrule, two
nails with
forged heads, washers, and a buttspike of wrapped sheet
steel (3-3/4"
long).

At right is a
typical
point, roughly
full size. Below is a socketed pilum head by Mark
Morrow (click
for
a larger view). It is 24" long and weighs about 12
ounces.

If your pilum head
bends
when thrown (as it should!), and you wish to avoid
stressing and
eventually breaking the metal by simply bending it
straight again, heat
the bend red-hot with a propane torch or in a forge, and
quickly hammer
it back into shape. Do not quench it in water to
cool it!
(See the page on Armoring Hints.)

In Legio XX we all have
hand-forged
pila and they work very well. But to avoid the repeated strain
of
throwing them, since they do cost us money and labor, we have made a
number
of what we call "cheapy chuckers" for our throwing demonstrations
and
practices.
These are literally made of junk, steel rods and broom or tool
handles
pulled out of trash piles. Mind you, we keep these stowed away
until
we need them, using our good pila for showing to the public.
Construction
is very simple. Cut a piece of round or square section rod to
the
desired length, mash one end flat with a hammer (heating red hot
with a
propane torch helps!), and grind it into something like a
point.
Drill a hole into the end of the wood shaft (as deep as your drill
bit
will go) and stick the rod into it, setting it firmly in place by
rapping
the butt on a solid floor, if necessary. Drill a little hole
through
wood and metal a few inches down from the top of the shaft, and
drive a
small nail through to hold them together. Cut a half-inch wide
band
off a piece of steel pipe or conduit and rap it down tightly over
the
top
of the wood, to keep it from splitting too easily. I
used
to
paint the metal parts flat black to simulate forged iron, but it
turns
out that pila made in exactly this way were fairly common in the
Republic!
So it is better to heat all the metal with a torch and wipe with oil
(before
assembly!), to get a more realistic blackened
appearance.
Then
you will have a pilum which will not be afraid to throw and break,
but
which will not embarrass you by its appearance. Adding a
buttspike
will add to its authenticity, but we leave the butts rounded because
we
usually throw the pila and then charge over and through them, and
those
whose points are stuck in the ground could be hazardous.

The socketed pilum at the top was an old Museum Replicas
"heavy pilum", a monstrous thing with a 4-inch leaf point
and an untapered 5/8" shank. I cut it in half and
ground down the shank to make a new point. Couldn't do
much about the bulge, that's a weld... Now it not only
is chuckable, but I use it to drill holes for the signum and
vexillum.

The one below it was
some kind of garden edger or cutter, with a heavy wrapped
socket. We just cut off the blade, drilled a hole, and stuck
in the shank. Kind of heavy...

On the bottom one you can just see the small nail below the
ferrule, which goes through the end of the shank.

Deepeeka still has not come up
with a decent pilum (though they may be getting closer), and of
course
Museum Replicas/Windlass and other
imported pila should be avoided. See the Page of Things to Avoid.

The pilum is a very dangerous weapon. The small
point
could penetrate a shield and wound the man behind it, or possibly
even
pierce
armor.
It has often been said that the pilum was designed to get stuck in
an
enemy's shield, forcing him to discard it, but of course its primary
function was to kill. However, the shield-disabling
capabilities
of the weapon would be a very visible and important side
effect!
A shield with a pilum stuck firmly in it would be very cumbersome,
due
to the leverage of the shaft. An oncoming Roman would be able
knock the shaft aside to pull the victim's shield out of place, or
simply step on it (if it's close enough to the ground) to rip the
shield out of the hand. If the pilum is loose in the hole it
has
made, the buttspike will dig in and act like a doorstop, possibly
very
suddenly. There would only be a few seconds from the
time
the pila hit to the moment when the Romans arrive with swords and
shields ready, not long enough to set a shield down and yank out a
pilum. One can well imagine the effect of hundreds of pila
crashing into a line of barbarians who are just starting to
charge. As well as those wounded and killed outright, many men
will suddenly be tripping over pila and shields, or trying to stop
and
back up to remove pila from their shields (or bodies!). This
will
disrupt the entire formation--the pilum is a charge-breaker.

Finally, no matter what the
javelin
hit, its iron shank was supposed to bend, if only a little, so
that an
enemy could not throw it back. When the Romans were finished
winning
the battle they could gather their pila and straighten them.

Back in the early Republic,
c.
5th
to 4th century BC, the pilum was made in "heavy" and "light"
versions.
The light one seems to have been the socketed style, with a long
narrow
iron shank and a small point, with a socket at the bottom to
connect to
the wooden shaft. The heavy version generally had a shorter,
stouter
iron shank with a barbed head, widening at the base into a large
flat
tang which was solidly riveted into block at the top of the wooden
shaft. By about the 2nd century BC or so, the tanged variety also
has a
version with a longer, slimmer iron shank like the light pilum,
though
it seems the overall construction was still "heavy". The
general
concept was to throw
the light pila first, probably at a range of about 30 yards, then
the
heavy ones just before the final
charge. The men farther back in the ranks may have held onto
theirs at first, and moved up to the front as the men who started
there
got tired and moved back to rest.

Gaius Marius is credited with a
design change about 100 BC. He found that the iron shank was not
bending very often, so that the enemy were able to throw the pila
back
at the Romans. So he had one of the two iron rivets that held
the
parts together replaced with a wooden peg which would break or shear
off on impact, causing the head to flop and making it
unusable.
After the battle it was a simple matter to replace those pegs.
One problem is that on many of the surviving pilum heads from this
general era, the edges of the tang are bent to form flanges which
essentially wrap around the wooden junction block. So they
aren't
going to flop if one rivet is missing! But of course few of
these
can be dated with certainty, and there do seem to be pilum heads
with
simple flat tangs which would function as the story says.

By the end of the Republic,
however, it looks like the difference between heavy and light pila
has
gone away. The tanged variety is slimming down, and the points
are generally a narrow pyramidal form, very rarely barbed any
more. Some have three rivets rather than two, and most have an
iron ferrule or collet at the top of the joint, so
Marius' wooden peg system was apparently no longer in use. But
we
do find
that the iron shank will bend on impact, keeping the enemy from
chucking them back. Most illustrations of
Imperial legionaries show only one pilum, but a few show two, both
tanged
and apparently identical. It would appear that two pila were
still
carried, but that there was no longer a "heavy" and a "light".

Somewhere around the mid- or
late
first century AD, the weighted pilum shows up. None have been
found by
archeologists, yet, but what we see in artwork is a regular tanged
pilum with a ball behind the junction block. We are guessing
that
this
is a lead weight, to add penetration power to the weapon since it
had
been getting progressively lighter over the years. The weight
does not
form part of the actual joint between iron and wood but is just
below
the joint. It might have been held in place by a cord wrapping on
the
wood below it, but there could easily have been some sort of nail or
rivet holding it in place. Since the wood shaft was under an
inch
thick
by that time, the weight didn't have to be very big, maybe
tennis-ball
sized or less. Though there is a tombstone from the late 2nd
or
early
3rd century that shows a pilum with TWO weights...

There were certainly other
types
of javelins used by the Romans, most
of them having points shaped like regular spearheads, if
smaller.
The
Republican skirmishers called velites carried a number of javelins
behind their shields, some of which apparently had socketed heads
like
a lighter and shorter version of the socketed pilum. In the
Empire,
auxiliary infantry regularly carried a
pair
of lanceae, essentially a
light spear suitable for thrusting or throwing. These had had
a
leather loop tied to the middle of the shaft. This was wound
spirally around the shaft, and the first two fingers inserted in it,
so
that the throw would both add leverage for more distance, and spin
for
more accuracy. (The pilum never had a throwing loop, as far as
we
know.)

The javelins of the later
Empire are beyond the scope of this website, and there is a lot of
confusion about the terminology because the Romans tended to use
words
interchangeably--verutum, spiculum, gaesum, lancea, etc.
Several
new
types of missile appeared, some of which evolved from the pilum
(such
as the later angon). The plumbata is pretty well known, and
was
claimed to have amazing range. On surviving examples, the lead
weight was cast directly onto
the joint between the iron and the wood. See the Fectio site for pictures of
modern reconstructions.